Friday, March 26, 2010

Cosmetics

OK, Blogger have provided some new templates that allow much more flexibility to the design of a blog. I want to stick with green. Colour is important for me in many aspects of my life and with the passage of time, I've gravitated towards different colours.

I 'see' colour, something I mentioned in my 'Change of Plans'. Even as a child colour was important to me and I have vivid recollections of care taken to arrange toys, pencils, jelly beans, smarties, etc in order, often the colours of the rainbow. As an adult, I similarly arrange my clothes, especially shirts, socks and underwear. I do virtually all the cooking in my household, and I take care to cook also with a sense of visuals in terms of colour.

I didn't seek it, but major life changes (a divorce) nearly twenty years ago, awoke in me a perception of colour I hadn't been aware of before. At this time, purple appeared to me and was prominent in my life, reflecting the changes I was undergoing. I still have affection for all colours, but purple became dominant. Later life changes brought blue to prominence and yet later changes elevated green. That's where I am now and I find that given an option between green and another colour, I'll more than likely choose green. Now, I'm not going to get into colour therapy and interpretations here, but if you're open to this aspect of metaphysics, you'll have some idea of the significance of all this.

This is all a round-about way of saying that this is why I chose green for my blog's colour scheme when I started it back in October 2006, and why I've decided to stick with it. I like the crispness of this new makeover, and Blogger have made it much more flexible to make changes. I might experiment a little, trying to avoid too many changes. So far, I've made the blog width as wide as I can and added another column. Cosmetics aren't too important to me - content is my main interest - though I do want to make navigating this site as pleasant an experience as possible. Feel free to offer any comments on the makeover.

3 comments:

iurgi said...

Hey Paul,
I understand what you're saying but, I think this green is too bright I find a bit of nuisance, it hurts my eyes a bit (not hurt in the sense of pain, but you know what I mean). Same goes wit the text in green.

Perhaps a darker shade would work? I don't know. Experiment a bit... see what others thinks.

Fred said...

Hi Paul.

My feedback:
I find the side panels too bright and feel that visually they distract attention from the central content.

Paul Martin said...

Thanks Jurguens and Fred. I agree with both of you. I made the changes late last night quite quickly, using the default palette provided. I also thought at the time that it was too light, but didn't realise that it was completely customisable (beyond the limited default palette). Anyway, I think you'll find this is an improvement, even if you think it's still a bit bright. Let me know what you think.